How Do Your Customers Think?

Small business operators often flatter themselves by saying they understand how customers think. Truth be told, however, customer thought processes are often diverse, subconscious, and hard to articulate. Sure, you can measure buying patterns and trends. You can take the temperature of your web site, develop metrics to evaluate site navigability, and even streamline your ad processes vis-à-vis tightly positioned Pay Per Click ads.

But when it comes to understanding the mentality of small business customers, we are often widely off the mark. Remember that small business e-consumers move quickly. Even “offline judicious” buyers make rash, emotional decisions on the web. After all, there are no consequences to surfing multiple web sites as opposed to just one. Online customers feel cloaked in privacy. They are thus freed from the psychological restrictions that bind customers when they shop in brick and mortar institutions.

For instance, let’s compare the experience of shopping at an online clothier and at a clothing shop in the mall. When you go to the mall, you are confronted by attractive sales people who offer their personal assistance and who fold and put away your clothes after you leave the store. This personal element facilitates hundreds of millions of dollars worth of clothing transactions a year. We are easily influenced by the store clerks -- they are attractive, so we want to be like them. They provide help, so we feel obligated to provide something in return. And so on.

On the web, they are no human beings “lighting the way.” You can feel free to disregard the web site without offending anyone. Remember that human influence psychology has not changed, biologically speaking, since we first evolved opposable thumbs. All of our psychological senses are keened for surviving in a world made up of small clans, we have no biological intuition about the internet.

Thus, since we are dealing with such a strange environment, it’s up to you, the small business owner, to humanize your small business web site. Add touches like live operators and live e-chat. Try to get shoppers on the phone. Ask for referrals. Take surveys. Do what you can to entice your each web surfer to become part of your store’s experience, not just another small business web site drop in.

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Do you have questions? Call 866-311-4158 now to ask a superpages.com consultant about Online Advertising.